JANE HAMILTON-MERRITT, PH.D.
Dr. Jane Hamilton-Merritt, journalist, photographer, war-correspondent,
historian, human rights advocate, expert on Southeast Asia, was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 1998 and again in 2000
for her work on behalf of the Hmong tribal people of Laos.
Her most recent book Tragic Mountains: The Hmong, The Americans, and The Secret Wars for Laos 1942-1992 (Indiana
University Press) was published to acclaim and selected as a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award in History.
It is now in available in paperback.
In 1999, she was elected to the Connecticut
Women’s Hall of Fame and inducted into the Explorer’s Club.
She has testified numerous times
before the U.S. Congress on chemical-biological warfare, genocide, refugee issues, and human rights violations by Asian governments.
During the early 1980s, she worked as an Expert Consultant on Highland Lao Refugees to the U.S. State Department.
As an expert on Southeast Asia, Dr. Hamilton-Merritt has lectured extensively
in secondary schools and universities throughout the country on Asian peoples and their cultures and on the Vietnam War Era.
At a Connecticut university, she created and taught a course of the Vietnam War Era for both undergraduates and graduates.
In 1969, she was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of the Vietnam War and
the winner of the Inland Daily Press Associations Grand Prize Trophy for her frontline combat photography in Vietnam.
She is the author of six books and hundreds of articles. She
has written for the Washington Post, The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles
Times, Dayton Daily News, Bangkok Post, Reader’s Digest, Saturday Review, Vietnam
Magazine, VVA Veteran, Stars and Stripes, Freedom Review, American Spectator, and
Asian Fortune. She has appeared on numerous television specials, including an hour feature on
Japanese national television.
Other honors
include: Yale-Mellon Visiting Faculty Fellow at Yale University, Outstanding Woman of Connecticut given by the U.N., Faculty
Scholar Award at Southern Connecticut State University, Outstanding Alumnae at Ball State University, and numerous honors
and awards given to her by the Hmong and Lao refugee communities in the U.S.
Currently she is at work on her next book and is co-editor of the Vietnam War Era
Classics Series at Indiana University Press. The first three books in this series are
The Stones Cry Out (Cambodia), In the Jaws of History (Vietnam), and To Bear Any Burden (interviews with
Vietnam War participants from all sides and all points of view.)
